“Yeah, well, I don’t believe the people that run this place have mothers, so they can’t empathize,” Anna had said. The anger at her treatment was still evident in her face and tone of voice. “But hey, I guess we’ve just gotta roll with the changes, right?”
“Yep,” Rick had said. He had been hoping to continue the conversation, to maybe ask her if they could get together again after one of her shifts. He still couldn’t get over the night he’d spent with her; she’d proven to be a very aggressive and sensual lover. She’d also proven to be a woman who knew what she wanted, and what she’d wanted was simple, animalistic and primal sex. None of that sappy cuddling shit afterward, none of that talking about possibly meeting up after the season was over for another date or two, maybe see if things could go to another level, and not even any mention of possibly doing this again. Anna had treated the midnight bump and grind they’d engaged in the way a guy would, wham bam, thank you, sir. She’d hardly looked at him in the few days after, as if he were dismissed. You’ve served your purpose, that treatment suggested. Instead, Anna had tossed him a simple, “See you tomorrow,” and headed out.
It would be nice to have another encounter with her again, Rick thought, scrolling through the system to see what was in place. He logged out and was trying to decide on what to do next when the door to the coat closet in his office opened a crack and a terrified, shaking voice said, “Rick? That you?”
Rick jumped in his seat, almost biting his tongue. The back of his chair hit the wall with a loud bang and he stood up suddenly as the closet door opened all the way. “Who is that?” he asked, his voice sounding loud and panicky to his ears.
He couldn’t make the figure out completely, but he recognized the voice. “Rick, you gotta help me!” And as the man emerged from the closet he saw that it was Brian Gaiman.
“What are you—” Rick began. His heart was pounding and he suddenly felt very frightened. His left hand reached for his desk, hoping to grab something he could use as a weapon.
“Rick you gotta help me, please!” Brian babbled. He nearly fell to his knees as he staggered out of the closet and leaned on the corner of his desk, his breath coming in ragged gasps. “The people running this place are insane! I need to find Carmen!”
“What are you talking about? What’s going on?” Rick had instinctively stepped back away from Brian, afraid the missing janitor was going to attack him.
“They had me tied up. They’ve...” Brian’s voice cracked. “They’ve killed people. They—”
The sudden sound of the outer door opening to the administration area, then the sound of approaching footsteps heading down the hall. Toward Rick’s office.
Brian glanced toward the sound, his features registering fright. “Oh shit!” he whispered. He looked back at Rick as he retreated away from the desk, backing toward the open coat closet. He put an index finger to his lips—please, not a word to anybody! Brian’s eyes were black pits of extreme fear. He stepped in the closet and pulled the door closed just as the door to Rick’s office opened, revealing Paul Westcott and two members of his security team—Pete Lee and Glenn Rutsey.
Rick, who was still standing behind his desk after his brief, frightful encounter with Brian, looked over at them with a nod and a smile. “Hey guys, what’s up? I was just about to step away from here and head to my—”
“Not another word,” Paul said.
The tone of Paul’s voice cut through Rick’s soul, making his balls creep up into his body. For the first time he noticed the grave expressions on their faces. They didn’t look too happy with him. Pete was clutching a tan briefcase in his right hand. It looked like his.
“I must say that I am extremely disappointed in you, Mr. Nicholson,” Paul said. “You can’t imagine the level of disappointment and disgust I feel right now.”
All the spit seemed to run out of Rick’s mouth. They’re looking at me as if I’ve done something, he thought. What the hell is going on? Rick licked his lips and tried to speak, but before he could, Hank beat him to it.
Hank flipped the briefcase around so it laid on the underside of his left arm, its lid facing Rick. A sense of dread bubbled in his gut. That briefcase was his, all right; he’d recognize it anywhere, especially with that large scuff mark on the front. It was a holdover of his tenure with the lawfirm, and he still used it to store important business documents. He’d taken it to Bent Creek because there were several legal briefs he was consulting with some of the guys on, and he normally kept it under his bed, in his suite when he wasn’t working, or he brought it down to the office with him and went over things during his lunch break.
Pete began fumbling with the latch as Paul continued talking. “We started searching the senior management and executive staff members’ rooms this morning. Look what we found stashed under your bed.”
The latches up, Pete opened the lid. The three men stood in front of Rick silently as he looked at the contents of the briefcase.
It was filled to the brim with hundred dollar bills that appeared to be bundled together in neatly arranged stacks.
Looking at it was like being sucker-punched in the stomach. He felt all the wind get knocked out of him.
When he spoke it was hard to summon the words, much less speak them. “I don’t...I don’t understand—”
“Didn’t think we’d catch you?” Paul’s eyes were riveted to Rick’s. “I can see it in your face.”
“Are you trying to frame me?” Rick managed to get out. His heart was walloping madly in his chest and every instinct was telling him that he was in a bad situation, they had him backed into his office with no way out except through the window, and they were accusing him of theft, of stealing money from Bent Creek’s wealthy guests. “This has got to be a joke, right?”
“No joke,” Paul said. His gaze never left Rick’s face. Beside him, Pete closed the Halliburton, snapped it shut, and set the briefcase down on the floor. “Mind telling us how that money got in your briefcase?”
“Your guess is as good as mine!” Rick exclaimed. His voice sounded high-pitched to his ears. Panicked. “I have no idea where the—”
“I saw you leave with a duffel bag yesterday morning,” Paul continued. The tone of Paul’s voice during this whole exchange was calm and non-assuming, but beneath that there was a level of danger. “Was that the rest of it?”
“What do you mean, ‘was that the rest of it?’”
“Parker Goode had two hundred and fifty k in cash stolen from his room from his suitcase. That money was bound together in denominations of thousand dollar bills. That would be easy enough to carry out in the duffel bag I saw you with yesterday, when you had to leave so suddenly to tend to your sick mother.” The way Paul said sick mother indicated he felt Rick’s mother wasn’t sick, that he had come up with that story to sneak off of Bent Creek grounds with a portion of the stolen money. It was suddenly evident to Rick that all the talk of Mom being sick, of his eagerness to leave for a day to get back to Boulder to see her, his nervousness about her condition, could have been construed as nervousness over his alleged theft. “Another three hundred and fifty grand was stolen from another couple.” Paul regarded Rick with a leveled gaze.
“No,” Rick said. His hands were shaking and he was finding it hard to control the quiver of fear in his voice. “No, you’ve got it wrong. I didn’t steal any money. I don’t know how it got there, but I swear to Christ, I had nothing to do with any of this!”
Paul nodded at Pete and Glenn. “Grab him.”
Pete and Glenn stepped toward Rick and grabbed him by each arm. Rick struggled and started to shout. “I didn’t steal that money! I didn’t take it, you can’t do this!” He tried to swing his fists but he was so quickly overpowered he could only grunt with exertion as the bigger men closed in on him, and then Paul was suddenly looming over him as Pete and Glenn forced him to the ground. He tried to kick them with his feet but they sidestepped his flailing legs easily. Rick felt a spasm of pain in his left
shoulder blade as a nerve was pinched, forcing him to the ground.
“This won’t hurt,” Paul said. Using the side of his hand, Paul swung a blow down on his neck, just below and behind Rick’s right ear.
Paul was right. It didn’t hurt at all.
It simply knocked him completely out.
* * *
Brian Gaiman listened to the exchange in the closet with bated breath, biting down on the back of his hand to keep from screaming.
He couldn’t see what was going on, but judging by the brief struggle that became quickly frenzied, then died as suddenly as it started, something bad had just happened to Rick Nicholson.
OhGodohfuckohjesuschristohpleasedontletthemfindme!
The closet felt hot and cramped. His legs were still stiff due to spending most of the past day hiding in Charlie Thompson’s closet. After sneaking in to Charlie’s room yesterday and finding it empty, he’d washed his hands and face in the bathroom, checking the abrasions on his wrists and ankles. The first thing he’d done was head for the phone at Charlie’s bedside. He’d hit 0 to get an outside extension, but then realized that the phone was dead.
Brian had frowned, wondering why Charlie’s phone was dead. He’d never bothered to use the extension in his own room—that’s what cell phones were for. Somebody had taken his cell phone during his incarceration, so using the extension in Charlie’s room was the next best option. But with no dial tone that option was out of reach.
Brian had debated briefly on letting himself out of Charlie’s room and trying somebody else’s, then decided against it. The wrong person might see him. It was best to wait for Charlie to come back.
He’d sat on Charlie’s unmade bed and was about to settle down and get comfortable when another thought occurred to him: suppose Charlie was partially responsible for his abduction? After all, Charlie was the only person who’d known where he was the day he was abducted from behind the storage shed. If somebody had wanted him badly enough, they would have asked Charlie where to find him when he was most vulnerable and alone. Charlie would have been the person to get that information from. Brian couldn’t believe Charlie was the person behind the abduction—in fact, he was confident that if somebody had asked Charlie where he was at that given time, Charlie would have merely given him the location in an effort to be helpful. But then surely Charlie would have heard about his disappearance later that day, right? And in the days that followed, he would have been questioned by security, maybe even the local sheriff, right? If so, wouldn’t it be safe to say that Charlie would be surprised to see Brian in his room?
Well, sure. But then again, if Charlie was partially responsible for his abduction, for whatever reason, he might not react the way Brian wanted him to. He might prove to be dangerous.
How do I determine that? Brian thought.
That’s when Brian got off Charlie’s bed and crossed the room to the coat closet. He opened it. It was empty. Charlie’s two suitcases were completely packed with the exception of a bundle of blue work clothes that were lying on a chair near the luggage rack in the corner of the room. One of Charlie’s suitcases was open, revealing his underwear and sock container. His work boots were sitting on the floor beneath the luggage rack. From the way it looked, Charlie had cleared out his closet early in anticipation of getting the hell out of dodge when the private event was finished, which meant he wouldn’t be needing his closet.
Brian had slipped into the closet and closed the door. Then he’d settled into a comfortable position and waited.
Eventually Charlie returned to his room. For the next several hours, Brian listened as Charlie watched TV, talked on his cell phone to somebody named Trevor, and eventually turned in for the night. It was his phone conversation with Trevor that confirmed things with Brian, and just like he thought, Charlie had nothing to do with his abduction.
“Oh, but get this,” Charlie had said to Trevor. “Remember my partner, Brian Gaiman? That’s right, he’s the guy that went missing. Just kinda disappeared. Uh huh, that’s him. Anyway, our chief of security here, Paul, he told me this morning that they found evidence on the grounds that Brian had gone on a meth binge for the last four days. Yeah, they found his stash, found evidence he’d been hiding out in some empty warehouse on the north end of the property. So anyway, he tells me that if I see Brian that he might be, you know, kinda wigged out. Paranoid and shit.” There’d been a pause as Trevor talked. Brian had to strain to hear, his mind racing and his heart pounding at the obvious ruse Paul Westcott had come up with to explain his sudden disappearance. “Yeah, they’re not sure where he is. He might have already scaled the fence and taken off. If so, he’s in the woods somewhere. Paul contacted the local sheriff’s department and gave them Brian’s description. Guess they’ll bring him back if he’s picked up.” Another pause. “Yeah, no shit. Fucking tweakers!”
Brian didn’t dare fall asleep, lest he snore or something and wake Charlie up. He didn’t dare try to sneak out of the closet, either. Instead, he’d stayed in the closet all night.
At some point, he must have dozed off lightly because it was the sound of Charlie rummaging around in his dressers that woke him up. Brian listened, trying to stay calm as he waited for Charlie to get dressed. When Charlie left his room thirty minutes later, Brian had let out a sigh, trying to contain his emotions. He’d never done meth in his life. In fact, it wasn’t drugs that had landed him in prison in the first place—it was breaking and entering. Brian didn’t like drugs, and he rarely drank. He believed in living clean and healthy. So to hear that he’d been on a meth binge told him that Paul Westcott, and possibly upper management, was behind his abduction. For some reason, they didn’t want the local authorities to get a hold of him, but just in case they did, they had a bullshit story already cooked up for them. And of course nobody would believe Brian. After all, he was a convicted felon.
Brian had waited a full five minutes, then let himself out of the closet. He’d waited for his vision to adjust (the lights were off in Charlie’s room but the closet had been pitch dark, much like it had been inside that freezer). The time on the digital clock on the nightstand read seven-thirty. Perfect. Before all this had happened, Brian and Charlie used to meet at the employee bar and grill every morning at this time for breakfast. If he was going to escape, he had to do it now.
Before he left the room, though, he’d taken a quick look around for Charlie’s master key card, which opened up the employee-only areas of the building. It was on the dresser, near a pile of change and a set of keys on a large key ring; the keys fit various doors and locks on the Bent Creek grounds. Brian had taken Charlie’s master key card and slipped it into his pocket. Charlie wouldn’t realize it was missing until tomorrow morning. By then, Brian would be long gone.
He’d let himself out of the room quietly. Then, using his knowledge of the property layout and the way the buildings were arranged, Brian had quietly made his way over to the administration wing. His path led him back outside and around the grounds again. Twice he thought he’d been spotted by the surveillance cameras, but he’d kept moving forward, expecting a spotlight to hit him at any moment, followed by the words, “Stop right there!” just like in the movies. That never happened. Instead, he got to the administrative wing without being seen and let himself in with Charlie’s keycard.
He wasn’t sure why he picked Rick Nicholson’s office as a safe spot. Probably because he liked Rick and felt comfortable around him. Guy was white-collar all the way, the kind of yuppie Brian used to make fun of, but once he’d gotten to know him, he’d liked him.
Once inside Rick’s office he’d closed the door and headed straight for his desk. Picked up the phone. Got an open line. Hit the star button, then the nine button to get an outside line.
And that’s when he heard the outside door to the administration wing, the door he’d just entered, click open and then close.
His adrenaline racing, Brian had put the phone down and looked around the room for any avenue o
f escape. His eyes darted to a door set catty-corner to the entrance to Rick’s office. He darted toward it, opened the door, saw it was a coat closet, and he closed the door and fought to contain his rising fear as somebody entered the room.
Once he was positive it was Rick sitting at his desk, Brian was at a crossroads. He trusted Rick. He had a good feeling about him, and he knew he wasn’t like the rest of the upper management types here. He stuck up for his people. And he was very reasonable. Surely he could—
He couldn’t help it. That’s when he’d cracked the door open and called out to Rick.
And now he was back in the closet, listening to the aftermath of Rick’s confrontation with Paul Westcott and his two goons.
“How long will he be out?” Pete asked.
“Couple minutes,” Paul Westcott replied. “The area I hit him in...there’s a nerve there in the back of your neck, right behind your ear. Hit somebody hard enough there, it disrupts the electrical signal and the brain interprets trouble and shuts your body down. That’s your anatomy lesson for the day, gentleman. Remember it. Just don’t hit somebody too hard there, or it’ll kill them. Now, let’s get Rick out of here and get him to the kitchen.”
There was the sound of the three of them maneuvering around to pick Rick up off the floor. Amid the grunting and heaving, Glen said, “You think we should search his office?”
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